Newbie question about SHA1 & GPU acceleration

Hi, I'm a fairly experienced developer but know very little about GPU acceleration or things like CUDA. I've read lots about SHA1 password crackers which go through millions of calculations per second. My question comes from the opposite direction. I have been trying out some SHA1 algorithms -- calculate SHA1s -- on my home computer and on smallish strings a single CPU core can handle calculating about 500k SHA1s per second. My question is: Would GPU acceleration help me calculate more SHA1s per second? If so please offer tips to go forward. Thanks, Simon